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Common foreign words and their pronunciations

Learning similar languages can be quizzical for a number of reasons. Here’s a quick glimpse into some incredibly common words in English, Norwegian, Swedish, and Dutch. Notice how the Norwegian, Swedish, and Dutch ones are pronounced:

English

Norwegian

Swedish

Dutch

yes

ja (“ya”)

ja (“ya”)

ja (“ya”)

no

nei (“nye”)

nej (“nay”)

nee (“nay”)

I

jeg (“yiy”)

jag (“ya”)

ik

me

meg (“my”)

mig (“may”)

me (“muh”)

me (stressed)

meg (“my”)

mig (“may”)

mij (“may”, “my”)

you (nominative)

du

du

je (“yuh”)

you (nominative, stressed)

du

du

jij (“yay”, “yiy”)

you (objective)

deg (“dye”)

dig (“day”)

je (“yuh”)

you (objective, stressed)

deg (“dye”)

dig (“day”)

jou (“yow”)

it

den, det (“deh”)

den, det (“deh”)

het

Additionally, “je” (“zhuh”) in French means “I”, but, from the chart above, we can see that “je” in Dutch is “you”. This confused me a little until Dutch and French developed their own separate identities in my head! As a bonus, when you say “ya” in Japanese, it means “no”, despite meaning “yes” in a ton of European languages.